


Sweet Thing

by peevee



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Honey, Kissing, M/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-19 07:32:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peevee/pseuds/peevee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the living room, jars covered every surface. </p><p>Clusters of them - every shade from the palest gold to treacly black - on the floor and on the tables, piled on the mantelpiece and on the <i>chairs</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Golden](https://archiveofourown.org/works/881117) by [ghoulkitten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghoulkitten/pseuds/ghoulkitten). 



> Inspired by [Golden](http://archiveofourown.org/works/881117) by the glorious and insanely talented [ghoulkitten](http://ghoulkitten.tumblr.com). This was a somewhat joint endeavour, as she agreed to cover [this picture of Benedict Cumberbatch](http://iampeevee.tumblr.com/post/50438914801) in honey if only I would fic it.
> 
> Who was I to refuse an offer like that?
> 
> As always, she has also made this fic a lot better than it would otherwise have been <3<3

There was someone in the flat. 

John could hear them shuffling around, moving things. A soft clattering noise followed by an odd, wet sound.

He crouched down in the doorway and shuffled into the hall, and immediately he could see that there was a faint glow coming from under the bathroom door. Adrenaline steadied his hand and quickened his breathing, and he could hear his heartbeat pounding in the quiet, blood rushing in his ears. He crept closer. The noises continued: splashing, the dragging sound of someone moving a chair, and John’s eyes were fixed on the door as he advanced.

In the slip of light there was suddenly a shadow.

A shadow that moved, and emerged with a spill of brightness into the hallway, tall and suited, sleeve rolled up and arm dotted to the elbow with fat leeches. One dropped off and squirmed on the rug.

“You’ll hurt yourself, skulking about in the dark,” it said.

“Out,” gasped John, who was sliding to the floor, heart convulsing stupidly as if it had forgotten how to beat. “Get out. Out!”

“My flat doesn’t have a bath. I needed one.”

Sherlock moved closer, eyes huge and dark in the dim light. He looked young, and uncertain. Another leech dropped near John’s foot. 

“Don’t,” said John. “Just…leave. You can’t—you can’t do this. You can’t just _move back in_ , that’s not how it works.”

“The bath, I—”

“Out!” John roared, and the sound echoed horribly in the shadowed corridor.

There was a short silence. John couldn’t look at him, couldn’t listen to him _in the flat_ , his big stupid shoes flapping on John’s stupid carpets, and he put his hands over his eyes and breathed until there was quiet. When he opened them, he was alone in his hallway, watching a leech nudge sluggishly at his shoe.

-

In the morning, there were no leeches to be found anywhere in the flat. He hadn’t been sure it was possible to feel more angry with Mycroft than he had been before, but he stabbed at the buttons of his phone with barely contained, choking fury.

_STAY THE FUCK OUT OF MY FLAT. BOTH OF YOU._

His fingers trembled as he pressed ‘send’, and then he threw the phone at the wall. It bounced on the carpet and didn’t break, and he barely restrained himself from punching the door. Mrs Hudson would worry.

 

-

 

Sherlock being suddenly alive didn’t change the fact that he had died. John had mourned him. Had believed his best and dearest friend irreplaceably lost, and there are things you allow yourself to think about someone who’ll never be there to know.

 

-

 

It was possible he was going mad. Had gone mad. He opened the door to the living room and found himself stepping back in time. 

There was Sherlock’s chair, facing his. The one he’d shoved unceremoniously into Sherlock’s room, unable to bear looking at it. The books that he’d flung into boxes. The skull. The _knife_ in the mantel, stabbed with brisk precision into its former home.

He stood and stared for a stretched out moment at the little rectangular magnifier which had been placed next to his laptop, and then he turned and walked straight out the door, down the seventeen steps, out onto Baker Street, gasping as the cool air hit his lungs.

He walked. He walked until his leg was cramping and there were blisters rubbing on his heels and his toes, until his shirt was stuck to his back with sweat. He sat on a bench in a little scrub of a park and put his head in his hands and breathed, in, out, in, out. 

His phone buzzed in his pocket. 

_You can’t afford it on your own._

A few seconds passed as John stared at the screen.

_Stop being stubborn. It’s logical, and convenient._

“Convenient!” he shouted, aloud to the park. A pigeon flapped nearby, startled, and gave a gurgling coo in his direction.

“Oh, _fuck_ you,” he said. It pecked at the tarmac.

He opened a text to the number he hadn’t used for three years, stabbing out each letter as he breathed heavily through his nose.

 _I CAN’T EVEN BEAR TO LOOK AT YOU AND IT’S CONVENI—_ no, no, delete that.

 _Please do not contact this number agai—_ delete, delete.

In the end, he just switched his phone off and made his slow way back to Baker Street, his mind whirring from thought to thought, shying away from the ones he needed to have.

The idea of packing everything away again made something contract painfully in the region of his lungs, and so he used Sherlock’s chair as a footrest and tried to ignore the way his insides lurched when he descended the stairs in the morning and saw it empty.

-

He changed the locks. Sherlock picked them, and had to be chased off the sofa where he’d fallen asleep wearing John’s dressing gown over his clothes. John had stared at him for a minute before shouting him awake. Just a few. Maybe five, frozen at the foot of the stairs, watching the soft rise and fall of his chest.

-

Then, nothing.

It was unsettling. A week, then two stretched out and no cameras or cars followed him as he shuffled to and from the surgery. The hair that he taped across the top of the door each morning was never disturbed. His mobile lay silent, the occasional text from Harry - _u ok? txt me_ \- deleted as soon as they appeared.

He limped to work, limped to Tesco, limped up the stairs of the flat, the three corners of a sad little triangle. He tried not to look his own life directly in the eye, so he wouldn’t have to face how pathetic it was.

He missed Sherlock, and he never wanted to see him again. He wanted to see him all the time, every day. He wanted to wring Sherlock’s stupid neck. He wanted to follow Sherlock around and make sure that he was still _not dead_. He couldn’t bear to think about Sherlock, except he couldn’t stop, he couldn’t stop and he _missed_ him, desperately, and despite himself. Before, the missing had been like an aching wound; useless and empty, agonised. Now it was a seething pit of feeling, white hot anger and shameful desperation. 

-

A month passed by. Was that feeling relief, or just emptiness? He wasn’t sure.

-

The smell hit him as soon as his foot hit the bottom step, thick and sweetly cloying in the air. He paused there. A headache threaded at his temples. There was nobody else it could be, after all, and he was _tired_ of this. Tired of feeling so angry, but anger was what he had to cling to. It was familiar, and he had a _right_ to it and between the grit of his teeth, the dull fury in his gut and the heavy sweetness of the air, his head began to pound.

He climbed the stairs, frustrated by his own plodding gait, his stupid aching body, and pushed the door open.

In the living room, jars covered every surface. 

Clusters of them - every shade from the palest gold to treacly black - on the floor and on the tables, piled on the mantelpiece and on the _chairs_. From the kitchen came the sound of metal on glass, then the little flourishing _tappity tap tap_ of long fingers flying across a keyboard. The headache pressed at John’s peripheral vision. The effort it would take to throw Sherlock out seemed like more trouble than it was worth, when all he wanted was a cup of tea and to sit in his chair. His chair was covered in jars of honey. The kettle was probably full of it.

He picked in between the little islands clustered together on the floor, and began to move the jars that were balanced wobbling on the chair cushions. 

“No! No no no, they’re organised by _region!_ ”

John turned around. Sherlock was standing up, spoon in hand. There was honey on his chin, and on the screen of his laptop there was an Excel spreadsheet. 

“What,” said John. It wasn’t a question, but Sherlock answered it anyway.

“They’re _organised_ ,” he said, waving his arms a little. “You can’t move them! No, don’t, you’ll ruin hours of work, John!”

John had picked up one of the jars on his chair, and he stared at it blankly for a few seconds. The label was white, with a little cartoon bee, and the honey inside was a deep amber. Sherlock started to move towards him, and before he could get any further, John threw it as hard as he could at the far wall.

It smashed. It smashed, and Sherlock shouted, “John!” and John picked up another and threw it and watched it shatter, _splatter_ against that ridiculous fucking smiley face. Why hadn’t he ever got rid of it? He hated it. Sherlock didn’t seem to know what to do. He was gaping stupidly, not moving, and John threw another, then two more, satisfaction spilling further inside him with each spray of glass, his shoulder aching sweetly. Each of them made a tremendous noise. His chair was almost clear. 

“John?”

Another jar splattered its contents all over the wall, and the floor, and the back of the sofa. John gritted his teeth against a sudden, thick surge of emotion that threatened to leak out of him, and turned to where Sherlock was edging towards him hesitantly. 

He picked up the last jar of honey from his chair; it was very pale, almost clear, and he could see how easily it flowed as he tipped the jar from one side to the other. He unscrewed the lid and took a deep breath. Heady sweetness, flowers, with a hint of something dark and rich.

Sherlock was suddenly close enough to touch, and he was wide-eyed, looking back and forth between John’s face and the jar in his hand, and having him off guard was _intoxicating_. John stepped forward, herding him back until he sat clumsily in the chair, and then John poured the entire jar over his head.

It soaked into his hair first, which had the effect of making him look like a wet cat, then it spilled over his forehead and down his nose and dripped from his chin onto his shirt. A drop crept sluggishly down over his right eye; little bits of it beaded on his eyelashes.

“You’re never going to leave me alone, are you?” said John, aware as soon as he said it that the tone was all wrong, emphasis all over the place. 

Sherlock tilted his head, and his tongue came out slowly to lick the honey that was sticky on his mouth. He looked thoughtful. 

“No,” he said. 

John was shaking a little, and the half-empty jar slipped from his fingers onto the floor. Drops of honey fell fat from Sherlock’s hair, his shirt going dark at the shoulders, drip, drip, drip. With his hands empty, John felt the sudden need to be touching something. He stumbled a little and Sherlock’s hands were there, holding him steady as he slumped forwards and clutched awkwardly and somehow they were slotted together, John’s face smearing stickily on Sherlock’s cheek, Sherlock’s hands big and warm and resting against John’s back.

“Don’t leave me,” John mumbled, in a burst of _something_ that refused to be pushed back down his throat. 

“Don’t,” he began, and Sherlock was suddenly moving. He pulled John close and pressed the tip of his nose against John’s cheek and _nuzzled_ at him in a gesture so un-Sherlocklike that John felt his knees go a little weak. Sherlock’s nose was soft, and John could feel little snuffs of breath against his skin, oxygen in, carbon dioxide out, the steady rise and fall of his chest as his lungs expanded and contracted and pushed at his ribs. Sherlock breathing, living, warm and alive under John.

John kissed him. On the cheek, first, and then his jaw as Sherlock gathered him into his lap; slow deliberate presses of his mouth against Sherlock’s skin as they clutched at each other, curled together in the chair and covered in sticky honey. He kissed the honey from Sherlock’s mouth with only a moment of hesitation, fluttering tension twisting inside him, and Sherlock made a surprised noise and kissed back cautiously, his hands shifting on John’s back. The chair was cramped and awkward with two grown men squashed into it and John’s foot was slowly going numb, but he couldn’t stop kissing Sherlock. Sherlock’s hands wandered over his hips and up to his shoulder with such tender touches, and John felt like he was being consumed with slow deliberation. He opened his mouth and licked at Sherlock’s lower lip, and Sherlock made a soft little sound against him.

He felt suddenly desperate with the need to touch. He brought his hands up to Sherlock’s face, trailed the pads of his fingers over Sherlock’s eyebrows, the familiar shape of his mouth, his nose, somehow managing to smear honey almost everywhere it wasn’t already.

Sherlock cleared his throat quietly and tilted his head back. His eyes were sleepy-soft.

“I think,” he said, voice low, “that I need a shower.” He was smiling. That smile that showed his slightly crooked teeth and made his mouth a funny shape, and he was smiling like he couldn’t stop. His hair was plastered to his head and there were still little droplets of honey caught in his eyebrows, his fringe, his eyelashes.

“Um, yeah,” said John. “Sorry.” He licked his lips, and saw Sherlock’s eyes dart down to them and back up.

“It wasn’t an important experiment.”

“I mean about the,” John trailed off, waving his hand lamely.

“We’ll get new wallpaper.”

“We.”

John felt Sherlock’s hands tense where they were resting on his hips. 

“I—”

“I’m still…really angry,” John interrupted, before he could lose his nerve. “I’m…this didn’t solve everything.”

“It solved some things,” said Sherlock. His eyes were narrowed, but his fingers relaxed a little.

John felt carefully at the edges of the ache in his chest. “Yes,” he admitted.

There was a pause, and then Sherlock hesitantly tilted his face up, _oh_ , asking. The ache receded a little more. John pressed a kiss to his pale sticky mouth, and he was already addicted to the feel of it, how Sherlock liked to take take take in quick little sips. How he pushed his whole body into it, demanding.

Then John’s leg really did go numb, and the honey dripping everywhere started to get more than a little uncomfortable and Sherlock moved to nuzzle stickily against John’s jaw.

“Shower,” he murmured, and John hummed and began to disentangle himself with all the haste of a man drugged into complacency by a warm mouth and wandering hands.

“Join me?”

John took his hand.


End file.
